Murdered students 'stabbed in head'

Tuesday 27 January 2009 00:04 BST

Two French students were tortured and murdered in a scene of "almost unimaginable horror" when a burglary at their home went wrong, an Old Bailey jury has heard.

Dano Sonnex, 23, and Nigel Farmer, 34, are alleged to have burst into the flat in Sterling Gardens, New Cross, south east London, and demanded bank card pin numbers from Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez.

Sonnex has pleaded guilty to burglary at the address but Farmer denies the charge - both defendants deny murder, false imprisonment and arson, being reckless as to whether life would be endangered.

Crispin Aylett QC, prosecuting, said: "To take revenge for the fact that they had been unable to steal money from Mr Ferez, both men were murdered in a way that can only be described as inhuman."

Jurors were told to brace themselves to see the photographs of what was discovered at the property after it was later set ablaze.

"What the firemen found was a scene of almost unimaginable horror," said Mr Aylett.

"The two men, dressed only in their underpants, had been tied up. They had been bound at the ankles and the wrists. Their heads had been wrapped with towels.

"They had been subjected to an attack of brutal and sustained ferocity - one of them had been stabbed 194 times, the other 50 times. Both of them had been repeatedly stabbed in the head. In some instances, a knife had been used with such force that the skull had been penetrated and damage caused to the brain."

Mr Bonomo, the tenant of the bedsit where it happened, had arrived in London just eight weeks earlier to study at Imperial College in Kensington, the court heard. His friend, Mr Ferez, was also a student at Imperial.